Could Your New Phone Have an Opinion About Reproductive Rights?

If you have a new iPhone 4S (or even if you don't), you probably know all about the cool, informative and hysterical things Siri, the new voice-response "personal assistant", says. This week, however, a lot of people are frustrated by the things Siri doesn't say—specifically, the answer to where a woman could find an abortion clinic in her area. The weird thing is that Siri uses Google to search for information, so she should easily be able to track down that info. So now people are wondering if there is an intentional block on information about family planning—and maybe Siri is anti-abortion.

The American Civil Liberties Union pointed out that Siri will tell men where to find a strip club or buy viagra, so clearly not all personal or morally-questionable questions are going unanswered. Apple released a statement yesterday, saying, "These are not intentional omissions meant to offend anyone. It simply means that as we bring Siri from beta to a final product, we find places where we can do better and we will in the coming weeks." It looks like we'll just have to wait and see if Siri will eventually have an answer to literally everything.

What do you think? Is it possible that some information is intentionally being blocked?

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